Q 2007 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY EDUCATION

Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 471–477, 2007

Bridging the Gap

Bridging the Educational Research-Teaching Practice Gap*

THE POWER OF ASSESSMENT

Received for publication, September 12, 2007

Trevor R. Anderson‡
From the Science Education Research Group (SERG), School of Biochemistry, Genetics, Microbiology and Plant
Pathology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

Student assessment, in all its forms, is central to the educational process. In this paper in the series,
‘‘Bridging the Gap’’, I describe how assessment can be used as a powerful instrument for influencing
how and what students learn and how and what instructors teach in a manner that is conducive to edu-
cationally sound curriculum change and improvement. In this way assessment is seen as a useful strat-
egy for colleagues interested in bridging the gap between educational research and its application in
teaching practice.
Keywords: Summative, formative assessment, teaching, learning, curriculum, biochemistry.

I have chosen to launch this column with a series of
articles on assessment because assessment is of central
importance in education and is arguably the most power-
ful tool that educators have at their disposal to influence
and improve the teaching process [1]. Since the terms
‘‘assessment’’ and ‘‘evaluation’’ are used rather loosely at
times and, in some cases, differently in different coun-
tries, it is appropriate to commence by defining them.
For the purpose of this paper, I will use the definitions of
Scriven [2] and Taras [3] who refer to assessment as,
‘‘judgements of students’ work,’’ and evaluation as,
‘‘judgements regarding courses or course delivery, or the
process of making such judgements.’’
This article, by way of introduction to assessment, will
focus on the power of assessment, not only as a tool for
grading students, but also as an effective instrument that
can be used by educators to inform, control, and
enhance the teaching and learning process for the bene-
fit of all stakeholders. In the next article, I will focus on
the meaning and assessment of conceptual understand-
ing and the often neglected cognitive skills that are so
essential for the development of expert biochemists and
molecular biologists. This will then be followed by an arti-
cle on assessing visual literacy and visualization skills, a
topic of extreme importance to modern biochemists,
whose success relies very heavily on visual tools to rep-
resent the microscopic and molecular world they investi-
gate [4]. Finally, the last article on assessment will ex-
pose readers to a variety of useful tools that can be eas-
ily used to evaluate the quality of assessment tasks so
* The National Research Foundation (NRF) is acknowledged
for the financial support (GUN Number 2053218) of this work.
‡ To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: þ27-
33-260-5464; Fax: þ27-33-260-6127. E-mail: Anderson@ukzn.
ac.za.
This paper is available on line at http://www.bambed.org
that they meet required standards and are valid meas-
ures of students’ achievement of course objectives. In all
these articles, I shall make use of selected examples
from biochemistry and molecular biology to illustrate the
main theories and principles presented. In this way, I
hope to facilitate the implementation of these ideas by
biochemistry and molecular biology educators and go
some way towards promoting the ‘‘bridging of the gap’’-
goals of this column.
Fig. 1 outlines the crucial relationship that exists
between the four key components of the educational
process, namely course objectives, teaching, learning,
and assessment. This paper will focus mainly on the
details pertaining to the assessment component while at
the same time emphasizing the important relationship
between all the four components. Thus, the figure is not
only recommended as a guiding framework for this paper
but is also intended to serve as a useful diagram for
facilitating discussions among faculty and students about
the relationship between the components and how they
affect or inform each other. The diagram occupies a per-
manent place on our notice board and is quite often
used to stimulate educational debate.
SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT: MEASURING (GRADING)
ACHIEVEMENT OF COURSE OBJECTIVES
Summative assessment has been described by Taras
[3] as ‘‘a judgement which encapsulates all the evidence
up to a given point.’’ When that point is at the end of the
course, summative assessment becomes a powerful
tool for measuring or grading whether a student has
achieved all the course objectives (see Fig. 1). In
designing a course, it is important to first establish the
course objectives, in terms of the knowledge and skills
you would like your students to acquire. As illustrated in
471 DOI 10.1002/bambed.20135
472
FIG. 1. Relationship between objectives, teaching, learn-
ing, and assessment. The single-headed solid arrows indicate,
‘‘. . . should determine . . .;’’ the double-headed solid arrows indi-
cate ‘‘. . .should determine . . .’’ or ‘‘. . . enables/measures ac-
hievement of. . .’’ in the downward or upward directions, respec-
tively; and, the double-headed, broken arrows indicate,
‘‘. . . should be in line with . . ..’’
Fig. 1, this should directly inform what you teach and,
therefore, what you assess. It is important to always
check that what you teach will enable students to
achieve the course objectives, and what you assess is
indeed measuring students’ achievement of the specified
objectives. In my experience, educators often think they
are doing this but find otherwise when they take a closer
look at their course notes and compare these to the
stated course objectives and their test and examination
questions set during the course. For example, one objec-
tive of a course in metabolism might be to develop stu-
dents’ ability to apply their knowledge of the principles of
metabolism to other pathways that they have not
encountered before. However, on examination of the
coursework and the summative assessment, it becomes
clear that the students had not been given any tasks
involving the interpretation of ‘‘unseen’’ pathways. On fur-
ther investigation, it emerges that the instructor had
assumed that knowledge of the principles implies auto-
matic ability to transfer and apply such knowledge to
other situations, something that science education
research has shown to not necessarily be true. Indeed,
researchers such as Solomon and Perkins [5] as well as
Meyer [6] have shown that transfer skills need to be ex-
plicitly taught through extensive problem-solving exer-
cises and teaching strategies such as the cueing of stu-
dents to transfer their knowledge from one context to
another. How to assess and promote the development of
transfer skills in students will be one of the focuses of
the next article in this ‘‘Bridging the Gap’’ series.
The grades obtained by students through summative
assessment can also be used to evaluate the effec-
tiveness of the instructor and of the course in achiev-
ing the desired objectives and, therefore, whether there
will be any need for course and/or instructor improve-
ment in the future. This assumes of course that the
assessment used is fair and valid as, for example, the
use of very easy questions can create a perception that
the instructor is far more effective than he or she actually is.
When summative assessment is performed on a regular
basis throughout the course, it is often called continuous
assessment. Continuous assessment gives instructors and
BAMBED, Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 471–477, 2007
students frequent measures of student performance
(grades) and their progressive achievement of course
objectives. This allows students the opportunity to monitor
their progress and, if necessary, to try and improve their
grades before the course ends. Continuous assessment
also affords instructors the opportunity to phase in new
types of questions so that students can get repetitive
practice at answering such questions and the opportu-
nity to develop new problem-solving strategies before they
encounter them in examinations. This helps to progressively
build student confidence and competence during the
course and better prepares them for the final examination.
Continuous assessment need not be followed by any
action taken by faculty to improve student learning
based on feedback from student answers. If it does, then
this constitutes a situation in which continuous assess-
ment has been used in combination with formative
assessment (see also under formative assessment section).
There is a current worldwide move to use a continu-
ous assessment process, with no final examination.
Instead, students progressively accumulate grade points
during the course by doing regular quizzes, tests, and
assignments, which are designed to keep them studying
consistently and well informed as to the progress of their
learning. A portfolio of all assessment tasks done by
each student during the course is supplied to the exam-
iner, who is then in a much better position, than in the
case of a single examination, to obtain a more accurate
and fairer measure of a student’s performance and
knowledge. Indeed, the science education literature con-
tains extensive criticism of summative-type final exami-
nations that count towards a high percentage of the final
grade (e.g., [7]). This is because a student’s performance
on the day of the final examination might be affected
adversely by factors such as stress-induced mental
blocks, off days, or feeling unwell. In addition, the sudden-
death nature of examinations gives students no chance
to recover and improve and no time for the instructor
to help them after they have left the course. And, as
stated above, students are discouraged from working con-
sistently during the course and encouraged to cram at the
last moment and to spot and develop strategies to pass
that are not in the interests of promoting sound learning.
All types of summative assessment have important
social implications, particularly in the case of new gradu-
ates who do not have the benefit of any relevant work
experience and related letters of recommendation to
present to potential employers. In this case, without
some summative measure of an individual’s capability or
competence, we would have no way of determining their
potential for a particular job or career. Thus, in such
cases, as discussed by Howson [8], society tends to be
more interested in the grades students obtain through
summative assessment than the learning and assess-
ment process by which the grades were achieved.
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT: MONITORING AND IMPROVING
STUDENT LEARNING
Consideration of the process of teaching and learning
brings us to formative assessment. Black and coworkers
have published extensively on the nature and value of

formative assessment (e.g., [9–11]). They describe forma-
tive assessment as all the activities undertaken by
instructors during the course that yield feedback infor-
mation on teaching and learning and, most importantly,
in which such information is explicitly used to adapt
the teaching to improve and promote student learn-
ing before the course ends [9, 10] (Fig. 1). Thus, forma-
tive assessment is not the same as continuous assess-
ment (see above), which simply involves frequent sum-
mative assessment plus feedback on student grades,
without any attempt to use feedback information to
render significant improvements in student learning dur-
ing the course. A combination of formative and continu-
ous assessment is seen by various educational research-
ers as providing a more complete teaching and learning
experience for students.
There is extensive evidence (e.g., [9]) that formative
assessment can raise standards of learning and develop
faculty’s professional practice in a way that they value. A
key factor is the quality of the feedback information
yielded by the assessment tasks. Good feedback should
indicate the existence of any ‘‘gap’’ between the actual
level of a student’s work being assessed and the
required standard [12]. In this way, students can easily
identify whether they need to improve in certain areas,
while instructors can decide whether they need to adjust
their teaching approach, spend longer on a particular as-
pect, or give certain students extra tutorials. In addition,
formative assessment affords faculty the opportunity to
monitor and, if necessary, improve the quality and the
standard of the assessment tasks they are giving to stu-
dents during the course. Through analysis of student
answers, any questions that prove either too difficult, too
easy, unfair, unclear, or misleading can be restructured or
replaced with better questions. Article 5 of this series on
Bridging the Gap will focus more specifically on methods
such as item analysis that can be used to screen the
quality of questions. Thus, in this way, formative assess-
ment can afford biochemistry students and instructors
the opportunity to identify problems that students may
be experiencing at an early stage, before the examina-
tions arrive and it becomes too late to correct them.
A fairly recent innovation, which considerably enhan-
ces the goals of formative assessment, has been the
development of various personal response systems
(PRSs)1, more commonly called ‘‘clickers’’ (e.g., [13, 14].
Such systems, which are being increasingly used world-
wide by biochemistry instructors, considerably enhance
the active participation of students in learning activities
by requiring them to respond to multiple-choice ques-
tions (MCQs) in real time during class. Their responses
are then instantly recorded and processed on the
instructor’s computer, allowing for immediate student
feedback as to what percentage of students selected
each option. This affords the students and the instructor
the opportunity to actively debate and critically evaluate
1
The abbreviations used are: PRS, personal response sys-
tem; MCQ, multiple-choice question; SFES, science faculty with
education specialties; PCK, pedagogical content knowledge;
AERA, American Educational Research Association.
473
the various options presented and to justify their particu-
lar choices with sound arguments. This not only helps
students develop the interactive and critical thinking skills
that are so important for their development as scientists,
but also allows them to address any conceptual or rea-
soning difficulties before they become firmly ingrained in
a student’s cognitive structure and, therefore, resistant to
correction [15]. In addition, Burnstein and Lederman [16]
showed that the use of a PRS increased student attend-
ance, kept them more alert during class, and improved
their overall performance and motivation for learning.
The science education literature contains numerous
reports (e.g., [17]) in which educators formalize this moni-
toring/feedback/action process by doing research with
student response data obtained from formative assess-
ment [11]. The research outcomes can then, for instance,
be used to inform improvement of teaching and assess-
ment practice, the remediation of student conceptual dif-
ficulties, and curriculum change. This constitutes one
form of a much larger area of research that is commonly
called, action research [18] and is a much more rigorous
way of monitoring the quality of one’s teaching practice.
This approach is recommended to biochemistry educa-
tors as a simple, effective tool for investigating an educa-
tional problem, and taking action to resolve it. Partici-
pants choose a problem to focus on (e.g., Why are some
students producing such poor concept maps in my me-
tabolism class?), gather data, reflect on and share their
findings, plan for action, carry it out, check their results,
and plan for further action until the problem has been
resolved. This cycle of steps—act, observe, reflect, plan—
can be used more broadly to continually develop and
improve the quality of course curricula and teaching pro-
grams, something that has now become a basic require-
ment at most universities. The publication of action
research in a journal widely read by research scientists
would be of value to the whole biochemistry and molecu-
lar biology teaching community. In a future article of this
column, I shall discuss some of the many other applica-
tions of action research to the educational process and
introduce readers to quantitative and qualitative educa-
tional research methods that can be used to rigorously
evaluate the quality of their teaching and student learning.
Formative assessment can, through regular monitoring
of student progress and the giving of feedback, also act
as a powerful and effective instrument for promoting
learning (studying) during the course (Fig. 1). This is
because the more often you assess students, the more
they will have to think and learn about their subject and
the more often they will be motivated to get down and
learn in anticipation of the next assessment session.
Thus, formative assessment encourages students to
work consistently throughout the course, rather than
cramming at the last moment, which is so typical of the
period before examinations.
ASSESSMENT-DRIVEN STUDENT LEARNING:
LEARNING TO THE TEST
Assessment is an extremely powerful instrument for
dictating to students what and how they should learn for
tests (see Fig. 1). This helps them develop more effective
474 BAMBED, Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 471–477, 2007
learning approaches. Most students will not only use lec- c. The net production/utilization of ATP by glycolysis
ture notes supplied by the instructors to inform what and the pathway efficiency;
they learn but will particularly base what they learn on d. The synthesis of triacylglycerol;
what knowledge and skills past tests and tutorials have e. If iodoacetate was able to inhibit lactate dehydro-
focused on. Furthermore, how such knowledge and skills genase instead of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate de-
are assessed (i.e., the type of questions used) will also hydrogenase, would the muscle be able to gener-
inform students how to learn (Fig. 1). For instance, if ate ATP by glycolysis at a high enough rate for
essays are commonly used, students will practice writing strenuous physical activity? Explain.
essays, while if MCQs dominate tests then students will
To minimize the need for students to memorize infor-
practice doing these types of questions. Thus, this
mation, I would also allow students access to their text-
approach used by students, commonly called ‘‘spotting’’
book when answering this question, or supply them with
or learning to the test, offers instructors a powerful tool
a diagram of the glycolytic pathway details, that is, all
for directing student learning as they see fit. Whereas it
the information that they would have had to supply if
is normally very difficult to pressure students into chang-
answering Question 1 above. Question 2 promotes what
ing their learning styles, manipulation of the nature of the
Entwistle and Ramsden [19] call a deep approach,
assessment task to dictate a particular learning
rather than a surface approach to learning science, since
approach, offers faculty an easier means of motivating
such types of assessment require more mindful under-
students to change their learning styles so that they can
standing of concepts and the ability to integrate and
satisfactorily master the question.
apply knowledge to novel situations. Good conceptual
As long ago as 1983, Entwistle and Ramsden [19]
questions also allow for a range of scientifically correct
described two main learning approaches that students
answers, rather than a single answer, so that the stu-
tend to use, depending on the type of questions given to
dents are encouraged to be more creative and give their
them (i.e., how we assess and what students learn will
own answers, rather than the answer they think the lec-
both influence how they learn; Fig. 1). If the assessment
turer might expect. This helps students feel confident
simply requires the mindless regurgitation of memorized
that their thoughts and ideas are welcomed and will be
facts, students will probably use what Entwistle and
judged fairly.
Ramsden [19] call a surface approach to learning sci-
MCQs, such as those presented by Szeberényi [21],
ence. In a surface approach, they suggest that the stu-
can also foster a deep approach by students to learning.
dent’s intention is to master the examination system
However, such questions also allow students to adopt a
rather than learn as much as possible; to complete the
surface approach to problem solving and to obtain the
task requirements; memorize the information needed for
correct answer without understanding why it is correct.
assessments; treat the task as something not interesting
For example, when the student selects the correct option
or challenging; focus on separate facts without integra-
in an MCQ, how does the instructor know whether the
tion of knowledge; and, not think about why (purpose)
student actually understood the whole problem and the
and how (strategy) the topic should be studied. For
relevant science, or whether he or she had simply
example, during my undergraduate years, I was given
guessed the answer or rote learnt enough facts to be
the following type of question that encouraged me to
able to select the correct answer without understanding
adopt a surface approach to learning about metabolism.
the science? One way to minimize such problems is to
Question 1 always ask students to give an explanation for the
choice they made. This encourages the student to think
‘‘Give details of the glycolytic pathway, with respect to more deeply about the question, while the instructor can
the chemical structures of all intermediates and the then easily establish whether a correct choice is backed
names of relevant enzymes, coenzymes, and cofactors.’’ up by a sound explanation and, therefore, deep concep-
Such a question clearly encourages the memorization of tual understanding of the problem. Question 3 below, is
facts and does not require the students to demonstrate an example of such a question that, like question 2, also
their understanding of the functioning of a metabolic probes an aspect of student understanding of the func-
pathway. In contrast, I have used the following type of tioning of metabolism.
question in my metabolism course [20], which requires
extensive understanding of the functioning of a pathway, Question 3
including transfer and application of knowledge of ther-
Consider the following part of the glycolytic pathway
modynamics and kinetics, to solve the problem.
functioning in a cell.
Question 2
The discovery that glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehy-
drogenase is irreversibly inhibited by iodoacetate was im-
portant in the history of research on glycolysis. Explain
the effect of this inhibitor in muscle on:
a. The overall flux through glycolysis;
b. The relative concentrations of intermediates of the If 6-phosphofructokinase is totally and irreversibly inhib-
glycolytic pathway; ited by a toxic substance:

i. The reactions AFTER the inhibited 6-phosphofruc-
tokinase reaction will:
Speed up/continue at the same rate/slow down/
stop (Circle the correct answer)
Because . . .
ii. The reactions BEFORE the inhibited 6-phospho-
fructokinase reaction will:
Speed up/continue at the same rate/slow down/
stop (Circle the correct answer)
Because . . .
iii. The overall flux through glycolysis will:
Stay the same/increase/decrease/be zero (Circle
the correct answer)
Because . . .
Thus, in summary, in a deep learning approach, the stu-
dent’s intention is to understand, question, critique, and
debate the course content; relate new ideas to previous
knowledge; relate concepts to everyday experience; relate
evidence to conclusions; examine the logic of the argu-
ment; and apply knowledge to solving problems. Since
many students have a background of rote learning from
their earlier education, the sudden expectation that stu-
dents should think and reason out cognitively demanding
problems can be a stressful experience for them [20].
Therefore, care should be taken to gradually introduce stu-
dents to assessment that requires a deep approach to
learning and to ensure that they are given plenty of prac-
tice at answering such questions. It is also important to
not continually reuse the same ‘‘deep’’ questions from one
year to the next as, in my experience, many students will
seize any opportunity to memorize answers (rather than
make the effort to do some deep thinking) and thereby
revert back to a surface approach to learning.
ASSESSMENT-DRIVEN CURRICULUM CHANGE:
TEACHING TO THE TEST
As illustrated in Fig. 1 (see broken, double-headed
arrows), what and how we assess should always be in
line with what and how we teach, and vice versa, since
both respectively inform students what and how to learn
in the course. This relationship between the ‘‘what’s,’’
and between the ‘‘how’s,’’ of teaching and assessment
can be used to great advantage by faculty working to-
gether with educational consultants to upgrade teaching
in a department. With the cooperation of staff, they can
use assessment as a powerful instrument for influencing
faculty to change how and what they teach in a manner
that is far less threatening than direct criticism of their
teaching. For example, if they would like to influence fac-
ulty to use a more problem-based teaching approach,
they could encourage them to use, or even supply them
with, assessment tasks that require such an approach
(e.g., see Harold B. White’s column on problem-based
learning, Biochem. Mol. Biol. Educ.), and this will more
than likely lead to a change in their teaching style to
accommodate such a change in approach. Such curricu-
lum teamwork, and the resultant changes that incur, can
ultimately lead to whole-department curriculum changes,
as all the other aspects of the educational process fall
into line with the changes. In fact, this was one of the
475
approaches successfully used by numerous medical
schools worldwide when they introduced problem-based
and theme-based learning into their curricula. To ensure
greater success in such ventures, various scientists and
educational researchers (e.g., [22]) have recommended
that departments consider hiring Science Faculty with
Education Specialties (SFES), into science departments
who can assist in all areas of the educational process
and facilitate ongoing curriculum development, backed
up by sound discipline-based educational research. This
issue was extensively discussed in paper 1 of this col-
umn [23] and has been strongly supported by many fac-
ulty as an indispensable strategy for facilitating the bridg-
ing of the research-teaching practice gap.
Although assessment-driven curriculum change, or in
its simplest form ‘‘teaching to the test,’’ is considered
by many science educators as undesirable, there is no
doubt that the questions often given at the end of text-
book chapters, or offered as textbook supplements, can
and do, have a profound influence on what faculty teach.
Thus, in an informal way, assessment-driven change is
happening all the time, so why not formalize it as a
‘‘bridging-the-gap’’ activity?
PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE (PCK): WHAT WE TEACH
AND ASSESS DETERMINES HOW WE TEACH AND ASSESS
The relationship between the ‘‘what’s’’ and the ‘‘how’s’’
of teaching, learning, and assessment (Fig. 1) has been the
target of extensive science education research since Lee
Shulman, of Stanford University, first coined the term ped-
agogical content knowledge (PCK) in his 1985 Presiden-
tial address at the American Educational Research Associ-
ation (AERA). In his seminal paper [24], he suggests that
faculty not only need science content knowledge and ped-
agogical knowledge to be competent instructors but also a
third type of knowledge, which he termed PCK. To distin-
guish between the three types of knowledge, he describes
content knowledge as knowledge of scientific and mathe-
matical principles, laws, theories, and concepts; thinking,
reasoning, critical, analytical, synthetic, and process (i.e.,
cognitive) skills; practical and technical skills; and attitudes
and values. Pedagogical knowledge is described as
knowledge of teaching and assessment techniques; curric-
ulum material development; student learning and theories
of learning; and management of learning environments.
Finally, he defines PCK as knowledge of the specific teach-
ing and assessment approaches that are most appropriate
for each topic, principle, concept, or skill. In other words,
how you teach and assess should depend on what you are
teaching and assessing (Fig. 1), as different content areas,
topics, or skills need a different pedagogical approach.
More simply, it is the additional knowledge that new lec-
turers and even tutors realize they need when teaching
subject matter for the first time—how to communicate it in
the most appropriate manner for optimal learning.
According to Shulman and colleagues, PCK includes
knowledge of the most useful and appropriate ways of
representing (e.g., verbal descriptions, diagrams, simula-
tions, animations, equations, and graphs), teaching, and
assessing each individual topic or concept and skill, so
as to make it optimally comprehensible and understand-
476
able to students. It also includes knowledge of what
makes specific topics, concepts, and skills easy or diffi-
cult for students to learn. This, in turn, includes knowl-
edge of students’ prior knowledge or preconceptions
that they bring with them from different educational
backgrounds; students’ alternative conceptions and
incorrect ways of reasoning; and remediation strategies
or instructional conditions that would most likely correct
all these difficulties.
Clearly, all biochemistry faculty possess some PCK,
particularly concerning the topics they are most experi-
enced in teaching, and that their PCK will continually de-
velop throughout their teaching careers. The big question
is whether their PCK of a particular topic requires
improvement and, if so, how can they go about improv-
ing their PCK? Since few, if any, biochemistry textbooks
or accompanying instructor’s manuals explicitly describe
the PCK that faculty could implement when teaching
each topic, instructors need to find alternative ways of
developing their PCK. One way is to gather a group of
colleagues together, who are all experienced in teaching
the topic of interest, and brainstorm what the optimal
way of teaching that topic is in terms of the best teach-
ing and assessment approaches, including the most use-
ful representations and strategies for preventing or reme-
diating student difficulties. For example, regarding the
topic of metabolism, as discussed above, I would recom-
mend teaching and assessment approaches that mini-
mize the need for rote learning chemical structures and
rather emphasize understanding of the functioning of
pathways. Other components of my PCK regarding me-
tabolism would, for example, include the use of anima-
tions to illustrate chemical and cellular processes; the
use of thermodynamics and kinetics principles and cal-
culations to explain metabolic regulation, reaction direc-
tion, rate, etc; the use of concept maps [25] to develop
students’ integrated knowledge of metabolic concepts;
the use of examples of enzyme inhibitors or gene muta-
tions to understand how pathways respond to stress;
and the use of unseen pathways and biotechnology
processes to develop students’ ability to transfer and
apply their knowledge of metabolic principles to novel
situations. Considering my past research on student diffi-
culties with metabolism (see for example [20] and [26]), I
would also present to colleagues how I believe such diffi-
culties could be prevented or remediated during teaching.
In summary, Shulman and Sherin [27] stated that,
‘‘. . . one of the most significant factors influencing the
effectiveness of teaching is the teacher’s own subject
matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.’’
In presenting some examples of PCK, Bucat [28] reinfor-
ces this opinion by emphasizing the importance and ur-
gency of doing some education research that probes
and documents the topic-specific PCK of respected
chemistry faculty. Since, as already discussed, what and
how instructors assess needs to be in line with what and
how they teach, assessment is not only an integral part
of PCK but can be used as a powerful instrument to
promote the development of PCK in faculty [29]. Thus,
it is clearly of utmost importance that biochemistry
educators also develop and document their own PCK for
BAMBED, Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 471–477, 2007
each biochemistry topic, concept, or skill that they teach
and that assessment can be used as a powerful tool for
promoting this development.
CONCLUSION
In this article, I have shown that assessment can be
used by biochemistry and molecular biology educators
and educational developers as a powerful instrument for
‘‘bridging the gap’’ [23] between research knowledge on
curricula, teaching, and learning and its application in the
educational process. More specifically, assessment can
be used in multiple ways as a powerful tool for affecting
student learning and facilitating both faculty development
and curriculum change. Since the major aim of this arti-
cle, and all the articles in this column, is to facilitate the
application of ideas from the science education research
literature to teaching practice, the following is a summary
of the multiple ways in which I recommend biochemistry
and molecular biology educators could harness the
power of assessment.
• Use summative assessment to measure (grade) stu-
dent achievement of course objectives;
• Use summative assessment to evaluate instructor
and course effectiveness and to inform faculty and
curriculum development;
• Use formative assessment to monitor student pro-
gress during the course and give feedback that is
explicitly used to improve and promote teaching and
student learning;
• Use PRSs to give immediate feedback that pro-
motes active learning, critical debate, and the reme-
diation of any difficulties among students;
• Use action research to monitor and inform teaching
practice, student learning, and curriculum change;
• Use continuous assessment, with no final examina-
tion, to promote consistent studying and to allow
students to recover from setbacks and improve their
accumulative grades during the course;
• Use what you assess to influence what students
learn (learning to the test);
• Use how you assess to determine whether students
will use a surface or deep approach to learning;
• Use what and how you assess to influence what and
how faculty teach (teaching to the test);
• Use assessment to promote the development of
instructors’ PCK.
In conclusion, it is perhaps fitting to quote the words of
Graue [30] who states, ‘‘Choosing the appropriate assess-
ment strategy is a validity concern; the tool must be rele-
vant to the task at hand . . . .’’ In discussing the important
relationships between teaching, learning, and assess-
ment, this article has introduced many important aspects
of what amounts to the issue of validity. This topic will be
the focus of more detailed coverage in the next two
articles of this column, where we will illustrate how differ-
ent forms of assessment need to be used, depending on
what knowledge and skills are being assessed.
Acknowledgment— John Rogan (Univ. KwaZulu-Natal, Pieter-
maritzburg), Adele Wolfson (Wellesley, Massachusetts), Judith
G. Voet (Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania), Duane W. Sears

(Univ. California, Santa Barbara), Konrad J. Schönborn (Georg-
August-Universität, Göttingen), and Patricia McLean (Univ.
KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg) are thanked for their excellent
critique of this article. Diane J. Grayson (University of Pretoria)
is acknowledged for sharing her excellent knowledge of assess-
ment during the 1990s. Questions 2 and 3 stemmed from a
collaboration on metabolism with Diane Grayson and L. Gail
Crossley (Australian Catholic University, Sydney).
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